Stuart Drama.
Host and dates: Liverpool John Moores University | 6-9 July 2027.
Deadline for submissions: 2 October 2026.
Event organised by
- Brandi Adams (Arizona State University);
- Marissa Nicosia (Penn State Abington);
- Caroline Taylor (Oxford);
- Rachel Willie (LJMU)
Event presentation
Few period demarcations remain as stubborn as 1642 and 1660 in the study of English theatrical culture. This conference seeks to reinvigorate the conversation around Stuart drama, 1603–1707, an era whose continuities have been obscured by periodisation and disciplinary norms. Bringing together scholars from literary studies, history, book history, theatre history, modern languages, and music history, this conference’s keynotes, roundtables, workshops, and paper sessions will reconsider drama in the long seventeenth century.
Confirmed Keynotes:
- Brandi Adams (Arizona State University)
- David McInnis (University of Melbourne)
- Perry Mills (Edward’s Boys)
- Lucy Munro (King’s College London)
- Deborah Payne (American University, Washington DC)
Website address
Contact details
https://stuartdrama.com/contact
(Posted 17 May 2026)
32nd Annual Dickens Society Symposium: Dickens Rocks!
Host and dates: The Dickens Society (virtual) | 12–15 July 2027.
Deadline for submissions: 31 January 2027.
Event organised by Lydia Craig, Sophia Jochem, Christian Lehmann
Venue details: virtual
Event presentation
The Symposium will be organized out of Cleveland, home to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and that claim inspires our topic: Dickens Rocks! What did Dickens think about music? How did he incorporate it into his writing and thinking? What did musicians (Victorian, 20th-century, and modern) think about Dickens? What does it mean to think about Dickens musically? What happens when we focus on the melo in melodramatic? We embrace thinking about “rock” in as broad a sense as possible. Topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Victorian song culture and Dickens’s quotations of popular music
- Dickens’s singers and musicians (Dick Swiveller, Harold Skimpole, Young Bagnet, Cavalletto, John Jasper, Frederick Dorrit)
- Musical qualities of Dickens’s prose and musical metaphors
- Dickens and Minstrelsy
- Musical spaces: streets, concert halls, churches, etc.
- Dickens and the musical industry (Hutchinson Family Singers, Jenny Lind; Silas Wegg; etc.)
- Dickens on musical genre: opera, classical, folk, etc.
- Musical adaptations of Dickens’s prose and poetry
- Allusions to Dickens’s works in modern popular music (rock, rap, country, etc.)
- Dickens and mountaineering, geology, petrology
- “Rocky” in the sense of struggle or upheaval (social, political, systemic, etc.)
- Dickens as rock star
- “Between a rock and a hard place,” foundations, stability, etc.
As always, papers on Dickensian topics other than the stated theme will also be welcome.
In response to the global climate crisis and the Society’s aim to enable participation for members from all countries and demographics, this year’s symposium will be held online. In addition to our usual panels, we will have several opportunities for socializing and formal entertainment. Details about symposium scholarships, prizes, and awards will be found on the Dickens Society website, dickenssociety.org/symposium, together with membership information.
Proposals of 250 words maximum for 20-minute presentations given in English should be submitted by 31 January 2027 through the form linked on the Dickens Society’s website. AI-generated content may not be used in proposals or symposium presentations. Please note that all presenters must be members of the Dickens Society by the time of the Symposium. Membership costs $35.00/year and includes a subscription to Dickens Quarterly.
Website address
Contact details
Please contact the organizing committee, Lydia Craig, Sophia Jochem, and Christian Lehmann, with any questions at dickensrocks2027@gmail.com.
CFP
For further details, please check the original call inserted below.
DSS27_CFP_printable(Posted 7 November 2026)
Irony: Dramatic and Otherwise.
Host and dates: University of Tübingen, Germany | 25-28 July 2027.
Deadline for submissions: 31 October 2026.
Event organised by Connotations: A Journal for Critical Debate
Event presentation
The 19th International Connotations Symposium will explore all forms of irony in literature, focusing on literature in English from the Middle Ages to the present. The focus will be on the relationship between verbal and dramatic or narrative irony (see call for papers).
The format is a roundtable without parallel sessions with an emphasis on discussion (30 minutes presentations and 30 minutes for discussion).
Website address
Contact details
CFP
For further details, please check the original call inserted below.
(Posted 7 August 2026)
Transforming and Re-fashioning Ireland – an EFACIS conference.
Host and dates: University of Lodz (Poland), Institute of English Studies | 27-30.07.2027.
Deadline for submissions: 10 January 2027.
Event organised by The European Federation of Associations and Centres of Irish Studies (EFACIS), University of Lodz (Poland), Centre for Irish Studies
Venue details: University of Lodz, Faculty of Philology, Lodz, Poland
Event presentation
Ireland has repeatedly reinvented itself through periods of change and instability, and this capacity for transformation is what the conference sets out to examine. As Luke Gibbons observes, “transformations induced by contact with the new may activate a transgressive potential already latent in the old” (Transformations in Irish Culture). For centuries, and especially since the end of the nineteenth century, Irish literature, art, politics and society have positioned themselves at the forefront of innovation, generating forms of expression and producing social reforms and political concepts in close dialogue with avant-gardes, as well as with new philosophies and theories. Irish cultural practices have attentively witnessed political and economic changes, providing realistically grounded, artistically challenging, and boldly diagnostic commentaries on shifts marking important moments in Irish societies, North and South. Have Irish literature, culture and academia been handling these issues sufficiently and adequately?
The organisers invite papers which engage with multidisciplinary areas of textual and artistic production, political and social theory, historical and economic analysis, or anthropological, ecological and archaeological research.
Proposed strands and topics:
- political and social transformation;
- new forms in literature,
- translation and new media;
- refashioning tradition,
- museums and the archive;
- mutations of care,
- equality and community;
- vicissitudes of funding,
- institutions and collaborations;
- evolutions in ecology,
- posthumanism and
- travel.
Keynote Speakers:
- Professor Fionna Barber (Manchester School of Art);
- Professor Margaret Kelleher (University College Dublin);
- Professor Derval Tubridy (Goldsmith University of London)
Invited Artists: Jessica Traynor; Radvan Markus
Website address: 
www.ulcis.uni.lodz.pl 
Contact details: ulcis@uni.lodz.pl
(Posted 24 October 2027)